A third man, the embassy driver, sat in the car with the heat on and the radio tuned to a station featuring dutar and anbur music. The late and very great musician, Abdurahim Hamidov, was currently working his way through a classic tune and the driver was lost in the melodies. He was not paying attention at all. He did not see the spiders and could not have cared less about a big pit of fire that was the result of a bunch of stupid decisions made by natural gas miners years before he was born.
The wind blew past the car and past the two men near the pit, on into the deeper desert.
The diplomat had a bulky briefcase with him. More of a small suitcase, really. Heavy with the burden of what was inside. It took real effort for Mercer to turn away from the flames. They were so beautiful and they spoke such lovely things to him, the smoky wind whispering in a language that Çariýar could never hope to understand. But Mercer managed to wrest his attention from the flames and down to the briefcase, which stood a few feet away. He felt a catch in his throat when he thought about what he was here to do. The honor of it was nearly too much to accept. To be chosen for this — for this — was incredible. It was the kind of thing the people in his group dreamed of, prayed for, ached for with every fiber of their being. There were older members, more important members, people of staggering importance, and yet this task had fallen to him. This undertaking. This gift.
He lowered himself to his knees and carefully placed the case on its side. His fingers trembled so badly that it took five tries to spin the dials of the locks. The click was so soft that he knew only he heard it. He took a breath and then opened the case to reveal the book.
The book.
Good god, how beautiful. He mouthed the words but did not say anything aloud. It was bound with heavy wood covers wrapped in skin. There was no writing on the cover, no title or author given. Instead it was engraved with spiders of every kind, including some Mercer had only seen in dreams. Vast, ponderous monsters with three legs instead of eight. Most, though, were kinds he knew well; like the kind that held the guide in such horrified awe. Jumping spiders and orb weavers and cellar spiders and wolf spiders. Beautiful animals. Perfect in their clever cruelty and wise in endless patience.
Mercer bent and kissed the book, making sure first that Çariýar and the driver were not looking. The kiss lingered and to him it was like kissing the thigh of a beautiful woman. Warm and yielding, as if the skin was alive. He felt himself grow hard. Ending that kiss was so difficult. It hurt him, but this was not his to linger over and he knew it. After all, they were watching. They were waiting.
He took off his gloves and then removed a small sheathed knife from his coat pocket. It was not much larger than a steak knife, and the silver metal with its razor edge had been properly blessed and seasoned, tasting only the blood of infants before now. He murmured a prayer in a language not spoken in this place in thousands of years. Then he gripped the handle in his left hand and drew the blade across his right palm, making three long cuts that formed a bloody star. Then he switched the knife to his right and repeated the action on his left hand. He placed the knife carefully in the open lid of the case and pressed both hands to the front cover of the book. He winced as the book drank his blood.
It took a lot but not too much because he had so much work still to do.
Mercer opened the book to a page marked with a lock of hair he had cut that morning from his little daughter’s scalp. She would not need the hair any longer. A small part of his mind idly wondered if they had found the bodies yet. Daughter and wife, maid and cook. They were there to be found. He didn’t care when or by whom.
Then he shook the thought from his mind and concentrated on his sacred task. The page was written in a dead language, but it wasn’t dead to him. It was so completely and thoroughly alive. Each word burned in his mind, flooding him with love and hope and purpose. Tears ran down his cheeks and his mouth curled upward in a smile of the purest joy.
The next action took the greatest effort and actually caused him pain despite being absolutely necessary. It felt like sacrilege as he took the corner of the exposed page and tore it from the book. The page did not cry out, but Mercer did. A guttural gasp of agony as real as if he had cut off his own hand.
“Bless me,” he said. “Forgive me.”
The torn edge of the page glowed as if somehow fire burned in its fibers. The page was not consumed, though, and he rose with it in his hand. He did not forget to take the knife, too.
Çariýar was still staring in fascination at the dozens of spiders that wandered out of the desert and crawled along the edge of the pit. Some scuttled over the edge and fell; others attached webs and lowered themselves into the hellish heat.
“I don’t understand,” said the young guide for maybe the tenth time. “Mr. Mercer, you should really see this.”
“I can see it,” said Mercer. Çariýar jumped and turned, surprised that the diplomat was there, and that he’d come up so silently. It took the young man a moment longer to register all of the things about Mercer that were wrong.
The spiders that climbed up the older man’s clothes, and inside trouser cuffs and beneath his coat. One crawled across Mercer’s smiling face. That smile was wrong, too. The guide frowned at the torn book page and the small knife, unable to process all of these strange things at once. Worse still was the blood that was so bright it seemed to scream. Mercer’s hands were soaked with it, and there were spatters on the man’s brown topcoat and shoes.
“Mr. Mercer, sir,” gasped Çariýar, “have you cut yourself?”
“Yes,” said Mercer. “I have. Here. Take this.”
He reached out quickly, slapping the page against Çariýar’s chest and, before the guide could properly react, pinned it there by driving the knife to the hilt in the young man’s chest. The angle of thrust was something Mercer had practiced for years and despite his trembling hands, he did it exactly right. The blade punched between ribs and muscle and into Çariýar’s heart.
“I love you for this,” said Mercer as the guide coughed once and dropped to his knees. Çariýar looked at him with a confusion that was profound, and then his eyes rolled up and he fell sideways, one arm flopping over the edge of the pit. Several spiders immediately crawled over him and raced to the ends of his fingers, stood for a moment, and then dropped off into the fires below.
Mercer let out a ragged sigh that was nearly orgasmic. Then he turned and walked quickly over to the car, approaching from what he determined was the blind side, and circled around to the driver’s side, effectively positioning the car between him and the corpse, drawing attention his way. He reached beneath his coat for the second weapon he’d brought with him. It was a small automatic, a Glock 42, with six rounds single-stacked into the magazine. As soon as the driver began rolling down the window, Mercer emptied the magazine into the man’s face. It was very loud and very messy, and the body flopped back with very little of the head left intact.
“I love you for this,” Mercer told him. He dropped the pistol, went over to the briefcase and removed the book, giving it a loving kiss and a covetous lick before walking over to the pit.
No one was left to see him step over the edge and drop into the mouth of hell.